NEWS: AOL Employee Sells 93 Million Email Addresses

Federal prosecutors arrested an AOL engineer this week and charged
him with selling more than 93 million AOL email addresses to spammers.
The 24-year-old employee was arrested at his home in West Virginia on
Wednesday, and an accomplice, who brokered the email addresses to
spammers, was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Both men were charged with violating a new federal antispam law,
CAN-SPAM, which took effect January 1. Under the new law, the
defendants could face 5 years in prison and fines of $250,000 or twice
the loss from their activities, whichever is higher.

The AOL employee allegedly stole the identity of another AOL
employee in 2003 to gain access to AOL's list of member screen names,
which also includes private information such as telephone numbers, ZIP
codes, and the types of credit cards customers use to pay AOL bills.
The list doesn't, however, include the actual credit card numbers, which
AOL stores in a separate database.

The employee sold the list to his accomplice, who, in turn, sold it
to spammers for $52,000. The employee later sold another list for
$100,000. He allegedly used the money to promote an Internet gambling
site he created.

AOL originally discovered the theft during an unrelated
investigation into a group of spammers and quickly identified the
employee who had been stealing screen names. "We deeply regret what
has taken place and are thoroughly reviewing and strengthening our
internal procedures as a result of this investigation and arrest," the
company said in a statement issued yesterday